I was all set to buy my iPhone 5 last year, when everyone
expected the iPhone 5 to be released. But then Apple went and released
a modest upgrade to the iPhone 4, and there seemed no reason
to buy that when the iPhone 5 was about to come out.

(I have an iPhone 3GS, which still works great. But I confess I
have been coveting some of the newer features. I tried to buy an
iPhone 4 once, a couple of months after
it came out, but hundreds of people had been waiting all night in
line to buy them to ship them to Asia, so I gave up. But I have
decided to upgrade to the iPhone 5, unless it totally sucks.)

The iPhone 5 is not going to have a really big screen,
like the gorgeous screen on the SamsungGalaxy S III. I played with an S III
the other night, and it confirmed my suspicion that it is just
awesome to have such a big screen. Next to the Samsung, my
iPhone felt small and old. Given that Apple thinks Samsung has
ripped off everything about the Galaxy from the iPhone, I
assumed that Apple would want to return the favor and rip off
the awesome big Galaxy screen from Samsung. But according to
the gadget gods, Apple has decided to just make the iPhone 5
screen slightly taller, not huge and insanely great like the
Galaxy S III. And that's annoying. Who cares about having a
"taller" screen? I certainly don't want to have to turn the
phone to "landscape" view every time I want to look at
something.

The iPhone 5 will have a new power cord, one that will
render the dozen or so Apple power cords I have
obsolete. This is also annoying. One of the positive
side-effects of becoming an Apple household is that we have one
of those power cords lying around pretty much everywhere you
look. And now, I gather, Apple is going to make all of those
cords worthless. (Unless I buy some special adapter. But having
to do that is annoying.)

So all that is annoying.

But the screen thing is really annoying. I'm not a
watch-movies-or-play-video-games-on-my-phone guy. I'm a
do-email-and-tweet-and-read-the-Internet-on-my-phone guy. So the
idea of having to turn the phone to landscape to take advantage
of the screen being slightly taller sounds more annoying than
anything.

I gather Apple is making some other changes to the iPhone 5,
too--moving a button, for example. But I haven't seen any changes
that I care about.

Who wants a TALLER
screen?

All of which means, I'm already annoyed by my iPhone 5. If, after
using it, I determine that the smaller screen is, in fact,
inferior to the big Samsung screen, I'm going to be
really annoyed.

So, if I'm so annoyed by the iPhone 5 and Apple's lame patent
attack, why am I not just rushing out and buying a Samsung Galaxy
S III before Apple gets them sued off the shelves?

Well, I'll tell you, I'm close to doing that. Very close.

But, as I feared a couple of years ago when I realized the
lengths Apple was going to to build a closed system with "network
effects," I'm also kind of stuck with Apple now, given that our
entire household has standardized on it. If I switched to
Samsung, I'd have to learn how to use something new. And none of
my iTunes stuff and passwords would work. So
the sad truth is that I'm going to buy an iPhone 5 even if it's
an inferior phone.

But it's going to bum me out knowing that I have to go with Apple
even though it's an inferior phone.

And it's going to really bum me out now that Apple is
suing people to protect its vast profits instead of just making
superior products like it used to.

(Litigation might protect you for a little while, but not over
the long run. And I know I'm not the only one who finds it
disheartening to see Apple resorting to it.)